Tag Archives: Georgia

Ex-Georgian President tours E. Europe

AUG. 5 2017 (The Bulletin) — Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili embarked on a high-profile tour of eastern European states opposed to Russia only a few days after being stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship. Mr Saakashvili first visited Warsaw and Vilnius, delivering staunchly anti- Russian speeches in both cities. Mr Saakashvili was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship last month after falling out with President Petro Poroshenko.

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(News report from Issue No. 339, published on Aug. 13 2017)

US VP visits Georgia

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AUG. 1 2017 (The Bulletin) — On a visit to Tbilisi, US Vice- President Mike Pence pledged to support Georgia’s territorial integrity and also to back Georgian aspirations to join NATO Mr Pence’s visit was the most high- profile US visit to Georgia since Joe Biden, Vice-President under Barack Obama, visited in 2009. Georgia has increasingly pushed to join NATO and the EU.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on Aug. 5 2017)

Georgia looses soldier in Afghanistan

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AUG. 4 2017 (The Bulletin) — A Georgian soldier was killed in an ambush outside the Bagram Airbase near Kabul, Georgia’s ministry of defence said. Three other soldiers were injured, one badly, in the ambush. Georgia has been a strong supporter of US military action in Afghanistan. 32 Georgian soldiers have now died since 2002 in Afghanistan.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on Aug. 5 2017)

Marches confront in Georgia

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JULY 23 2017 (The Bulletin) — Pro-European and far-right marches both protested through Tbilisi, culminating in a face-off that officials had worried could lead to violence. Although eggs and bottles of water were thrown, there were no reports of serious violence.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Ukraine strips former Georgian president Saakashvili of citizenship

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TBILISI, JULY 26 2017 (The Bulletin) — Ukraine stripped former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili of his citizenship, leaving the man once feted by US President George W. Bush as a beacon of democracy in the former Soviet Union effectively stateless.

Mr Saakashvili, 49, may now be forced to seek asylum in the United States, where he is thought to have friends, and where he fled to in 2013 after leaving the Georgian Presidential Palace at the end of his second and final term in office.

Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko, who returned from a trip to Georgia earlier in July, had once considered Mr Saakashvili as an ally against Russia and in May 2015 gave him a Ukrainian passport and made him the governor of the Odessa region. But the quarrelsome Mr Saakashvili fell out with his Ukrainian hosts and resigned in November last year to set up a new political party.

Ukrainian migration was coy on why Saakashvili had had his passport taken from him.

“According to the constitution of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine takes decisions on losses of Ukrainian citizenship based on the conclusions of the citizenship commission,” it said in a statement.

Mr Saakashvili shot to power in Georgia in 2003 through a peaceful revolution that ushered in his pro- Western government. In 2008, though, he lost credibility with Western allies and with domestic voters after he triggered a war with Russia.

In a Facebook message, Mr Saakashvili said that he was currently outside Ukraine and that he would fight attempts to block him from returning to Ukraine.

“Now there is an attempt under way to force me to become a refugee,” he said. “This will not happen!”

Since 2012, his United National Movement party that once dominated Georgian politics has been humiliated, losing two parliamentary elections heavily, a presidential election and most municipality councils. The Georgian authorities want to try Mr Saakashvili for various financial crimes, allegations he has denied.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Georgia teams up with Ukraine for EU push

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JULY 18 2017 (The Bulletin) — At a meeting in Tbilisi, Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko said that they would coordinate their efforts to join the European Union. Georgia and Ukraine both won the right for their citizens to travel around the EU Schengen Zone earlier this year for 30 days without a visa. They have both said that their ultimate ambition is to join the EU.

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(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Russian tourists flock to Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia

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SUKHUMI/Georgia, JULY 16 2017 (The Bulletin) — Russian tourists are flocking to beach resorts in Abkhazia at a greater rate than ever before, giving the breakaway Georgian region an economic boost.

Russian couples walk along Sukhumi’s beachfront promenade and sip Abkhaz wine in newly renovated restaurants. Russian is the main language heard on the streets, shops are filled with Russian products and Russian newspapers are available in local newsagents. The currency used is the Russian rouble.

Abkhazia looks, feels and sounds like a piece of Russia and local residents are, mainly, grateful.

A tourist guide in Novy Afon, around 20km north of Sukhumi told the Bulletin : “Thank God there are the Russians. Not only did they save us when the Georgians wanted to exterminate us but now they make our economy run through tourism.”

It declared independence from Georgia in 1992, triggering a war that killed and displaced thousands of people and lead to a de facto independence. In 2008 after a war with Georgia focused on its two rebel states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia recognised them as independent. Only a handful of other countries looking to curry Russian favours followed.

Moscow subsidises Abkhazia’s state budget and has thousands of troops permanently deployed in the region.

Other than the military and the breakaway region’s administration, bankrolled by the Kremlin, there are few other jobs in Abkhazia, making Russian tourists so important.

And they are coming in their thousands, all via a border crossing with Russia to the north. Last year Avtandil Gartskiya, the tourism minister told the New York Times in an interview that he expected 1.5m tourists per year, up from less than 100,000 a decade ago.

By contrast, references to Georgia have been eradicated, or nearly.

The cuisine gives away Abkhazia’s Georgian connection. Georgia’s food icon, the Ajarian Khachapuri, a boat shaped crusty bread filled with melted cheese and egg, is a firm favourite with the Russian tourists. It’s been subjected to a rebrand, though, and is called ‘lodochka s yaizom’. In English, this simply means ‘boat with egg’.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

New hydro power plant opens in Georgia

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JULY 3 2017 (The Bulletin) — Adjaristsqali Georgia, a subsidiary of India’s Tata Power, said that it had completed the construction of the 186MW Shuakhevi Hydro Power Station in Georgia, one of the largest to be built in the last 50 years. Its finance partners for the project were the IFC (part of the World Bank) and Norway’s Clean Energy Invest. The project cost $420m to build and has been under construction since 2013. Speaking at the opening of the plant, Georgian PM Giorgi Kvirikashvili said that power produced by the plant would be sold during winter, when there is traditionally a deficit. Georgia has been heavily investing in its hydropower capacity.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Foreign investment climate in Georgia is worsening says business group

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TBILISI, JULY 3 2017 (The Bulletin) — The foreign investment climate in Georgia is deteriorating at a rapid rate because of the unscrupulous use of the courts, the influential Georgia International Chamber of Commerce (GICC) said in a statement after its AGM.

The GICC was careful to say that it thought that Georgia’s government was a positive influence on the business climate but that there were other forces and influences that were dragging it down.

“On the other hand (there is) a negative and destructive power represented by ‘uncontrolled elements’ from both in and out of state structures who do not report to the Head of Government and on whom government has no control,” it said in a statement.

Specifically, the IGCC said that unscrupulous officials, police and other officials “scam foreign businesses, expropriate them, steal their lands and their businesses.”

The criticism is a rare blow to Georgia’s reputation as a place to do business. It is more usually associated with positive criticism, relative to the rest of the region. The Georgian government has not responded.

Direct foreign investment is a vital inflow of cash for the Georgian economy. FDI measured $1.65b in 2016, double the inflow of 2010 but down on 2007 when inflows measured over $2b. A war with Russia in 2008 dented Georgia’s FDI pull.

The IGCC referenced fines handed out by a Tbilisi city court against Philip Morris, the US cigarette maker, and British American Tobacco this year as bias against foreign companies.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

Oil shipments from Georgia drop

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JULY 4 2017 (The Bulletin) — Oil shipments from the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi have fallen 29.2% this year, an official from Kazakhstan’s state-run Kazmunaigas told local media. He didn’t give a reason for the drop although Kazakh oil producers have previously said that they have switched exports to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium which threads around the north coast of the Caspian Sea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk. Batumi is a major oil exit point for crude oil heading to Europe. A heavy reduction in its use will hit Georgian revenues. Georgian officials have not commented.

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(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)